1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to storage area networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Storage Area Networks (SANs) are computer systems in which large mass storage devices such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) devices are connected to a central processor or processors via high-speed network technology (as opposed to, for example, via a system bus). SANs are increasingly used to store vast amounts of information and their usage has grown exponentially with the rise of the Internet.
Virtualization of the storage area network allows for the organization of the physical devices to be hidden from users. For example, a company may create a volume hierarchy that allows the user to navigate though a virtual storage device. This hierarchy may include a series of folders and subfolders. In reality, however, the information in these folders and subfolders may be distributed among many different storage devices. The user may have no idea how the information is physically stored and may simply rely on the volume hierarchy.